Exploration

Archive: 21 October 2005

The gadgets in my life have recently reached a new level of extreme disparity.

At the enormous end of the scale, there’s the new television we put into our newly-finished basement. It’s a 50″ widescreen high-definition DLP set, and even though it integrates fairly nicely with the shelving and cabinetry we had built, it still looks stupidly big to me. When watching a movie, it really gives you a movie-theater experience, simply by taking up so much of your field of view. The surround sound, I think, gets cranked down a bit to compensate.

I look at this thing and I think to myself, “Why?” And the answer is: “Because it was in the budget, and plasma screens are still a bit too expensive for the value received.” So perhaps this is a form of buyer’s remorse, or maybe I’m just being neurotic. Either way, it has a vaguely looming presence that I’m not entirely sure I like.

At the tiny end of the scale, I recently got a 4GB iPod nano. This was the early-registration and speakers’ gift given out at UI10, and I gotta tell you, this thing is God’s gift to daddies. Mine already has a sampling of the best Carolyn pictures taken to date. I can show them off to other people, or just flip through them when I’m on the road and missing my family. It’ll also play those pictures as a slide show, using whatever transition effect I like most. Plus it plays music!

I’m sure it helps that I didn’t pay for it, but honestly, I almost love the little guy. No scratches (yet), and the sound quality is pretty darned good even with the stock earbuds. I’m not one of those audiophile types; if the sound is basically clear, I’m good, so the iPod buds work for me. It’s a bit disappointing, though, that the nano’s dimensions are roughly 1:6:13. I was really hoping for 1:4:9.

Anyway, propping the nano up against the TV feels like a textbook exercise in totally ludicrous contrasts.